


what you had to do

by brokenbandaids



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Five Stages of Grief, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-21
Updated: 2019-04-21
Packaged: 2020-01-23 15:31:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18552610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brokenbandaids/pseuds/brokenbandaids
Summary: in which Lance gets over her... eventually





	what you had to do

grief  
noun  
deep sorrow, especially that caused by someone's death.

1\. denial

the day after allura’s sacrifice, lance walked to her room before breakfast, like he did every morning.   
he knocked thrice and stood to the side, waiting for her to open the door and walk with him to the cafeteria, like they did every morning.   
he knew somewhere in the back of his head that this wasn’t like every morning.   
it was different now.  
she was gone.  
but she couldn’t be, because lance was outside her door, and the plaque read Allura, and she was right inside, getting ready for the day.   
so he stood.  
and he waited.  
and waited.  
for a long time. 

and she never came.

2\. anger

when they returned to earth (one paladin short), lance hid away in the halls of the Garrison.   
he couldn’t explain it, but seeing people happy, seeing people alive, made him mad.   
how could the crew of the Atlas be smiling when they’d just lost her? how could anyone on Earth be thriving when their saviour is gone? how could the friends she’d spent years and years with just… move on?   
So he started to work with things that weren’t alive. he was a pilot, and it was about time he learned how his ships worked. 

3\. bargaining 

lance had started to pray.  
he’d first done it as a kid, in the hopes of being heard, of being noticed and acknowledged. but now he knew that there was someone up there.  
and every night, he prayed.   
and he hoped that she could hear.   
he prayed to the gods above for just one more minute with her, just one.  
he asked to exchange his life for hers, because she deserves to live, and lance would die for her.   
he wished for time to turn. he wished to go back and find another way, a better way, to save everyone.   
he wanted to go back to fix their mistakes, so that she could still be here.

4\. depression

lance never would have guessed that he’d feel like flying was a chore. he didn’t expect it to feel like anything but an extension of himself. a natural instinct.   
but now, even leaving his room in the morning was becoming difficult.   
what was the point of it all? he was just going to end up in his bed again.   
it seemed like the world was washed in grey, and he was the only one who noticed.   
all the work he did was menial and unnecessary, so it isn’t like he was needed.  
and besides, anything he could do she could’ve done better.   
but she can’t do better.  
she can’t do anything.  
she isn’t here.

5\. acceptance

it’s a dark, rainy, day when it finally sinks in.  
she isn’t coming back.  
he knows this because people don’t name ships and trains and boats and planes after people who are still alive. people can’t have legacies unless they aren’t there.   
he realizes it when he’s polishing his ship.   
The Allura.   
it’s cheesy, he knows. but she was his first true love.   
and maybe she wasn’t meant to be his one and only.  
maybe her life was always meant to be that short.  
or maybe they just happened to be in the reality where it ended that way. 

but he still stands.  
and he lives.  
and he moves on.  
and he knows, that somewhere, somehow, she’s watching. 

he knows she’d want him to live.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading even tho it's short and trashy  
> i wrote it in like 30 mins but whatever


End file.
